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Home/The Milpa and the Holy Trinity

The Milpa and the Holy Trinity

Posted by: Shannon Muck / Posted on: / Category: Ladybug Letters, Ladybug Postcard
Zea 2

We planted the first stage of our little “milpa” this weekend. A milpa is a “corn patch.” The City of Milpitas is named after the little corn patches that characterised the area during California’s Spanish colonial period. But a classic traditional milpa is always more than corn. The Mesoamerican farmers who created the milpa typically grew a diversity of crops in their corn fields. The corn stalks grew high and vining beans snaked up the stalks, using them for support. Broad leaved squash plants would grow between the scattered hummocks of corn, and the dense canopy they formed would choke out the weeds.  Crops that we moderns might think of as noxious weeds to be exterminated, like pigweed or lambsquarters, were “quelites” to the farmers of the milpas and they’d gather them to add leafy greens to their diet. A fully realized milpa consisted of Corn, squash, and beans -the Holy Trinity- surrounded by a cohort of useful and nutritious herbs.

I’m playing around with the milpa idea for fun, and to see how well it works out in practice. I see my milpa as a typical type garden which might be found anywhere along the French-Mexican border. For my hard squash I’ve chosen to plant “Doran,” an heirloom French squash for the Cucurbita moschata- like a butternut, but round, like a pumpkin. I think the Doran hard squash will be an excellent size for our farm’s supporters, since they’re small enough for us to fit in the box and for our supporters to consume in one meal. We received seed for this crop from our friend and neighbor, Zea, at Fruitilicious Farm, who has been saving this old fashion variety. Any purslane weeds that come up in our milpa we’ll let go to seed so that we can have “verdolaga.” Purslane, AKA Verdolaga, which is esteemed as a cooking green in both the French and Mexican traditions.
For corn, I’m going with a purple and white Oaxacan corn that has big, floury kernels for making masa, or corn meal. Fidel, our greenhouse foreman, brought us this corn which has big, sturdy stalks that the beans can climb up. For beans I’m going to plant The Japanese selection of a purple seeded runner bean that originated in Oaxaca but is now known in the trade as Scarlet Runner beans or “Akahana Mame.” I’ll wait until the corn is up before I plant the beans so that they won’t choke the poor corn plants out. And to help the beans find direction up I’m also putting some sunflowers in my milpa. Sunflowers are another gift of the Americas to the rest of the world, and the ancient farmers who developed them treated them as a grain crop for their rich seed. I don’t think I can beat our local birds to a crop of sunflower seeds, so I’m growing some ornamental varieties for late summer bouquets.
A Mexican farmer would be sure to have cilantro somewhere in the milpa, and I’ll plant some too, but I’m also going to take advantage of a shadier side of the field and plant cilantro’s French cousin, chervil. In my experience, if the chervil is happy enough it’ll self seed, and soon I can count on having it as a low grade “weed” to enjoy.
I won’t plant any tomatillo de milpa- the tiny wild tomatillo that is the forerunner of the big, green tomatillos we see in supermarkets. For a couple of years in the mid 1980s I shared my house with the Campos family, and Ramiro Campos planted some tomatillo de milpa seedlings from his home ranch in Sam Andreas, Michoacan. The progeny of those original plants are now with us forever, and everywhere a drop of water falls in my field there’s a wild tomatillo seed to drink it up and sprout. We can’t let them all go to seed, but we’ve saved a few along the path so that later we can grab a handful of the tiny tomatillos they bear when we need to make a green salsa.
We have a lot to look forward to this fall and I can’t wait to see what comes out of the milpa. Meanwhile, basil season has started in the greenhouse. Here are a few cautionary tips about storing basil:
1. Basil is a mint family member. You can keep it fresh by re-cutting the stems when you get it and putting them in a vase of fresh water, like a bouquet. If the water stays clean enough and you don’t eat them first, some stems may even set little roots.
2. Basil doesn’t like getting cold. If you put the basil in a vase of water, don’t then put it in the fridge. Leave it out in a cool spot out of direct sunlight. The same advice goes for basil that you simply un bunch, wash and put between damp paper towels- keep out of the cold! When basil gets too cold the leaves tend to turn black.
3. Don’t try too hard to save your basil. Eat it! There’s more coming, and when we have enough we’ll be doing some specials for people who want to make larger batches of pesto.

We have a lot to look forward to this fall and I can’t wait to see what comes out of the milpa.

—© 2021 Essay and Photos by Andy Griffin.

~Special Note~

As the weather is getting warmer, the sun is rising earlier and the harvesting begins with the sunrise, we will be closing our East Bay/Peninsula shop by 6 PM on the Wednesday evenings before the Friday delivery. We close our San Francisco & Mystery Thursday shops on Wednesday mornings by 8 AM and our Santa Cruz/Los Gatos shop by 8 AM, on Monday mornings. Please get your orders in early so you don’t miss out on the harvest! Thank you all again for being such a part of our bountiful farm!

If you haven’t ordered a Mystery Box recently, now is a great time to get in on spring deliciousness! LadybugBuyingClub

 

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